How Influential Are Mental Models on Interaction Performance? Exploring the Gap between Users’ and Designers’ Mental Models through a New Quantitative Method

Bingjun Xie,Huilin Wang,Jia Zhou

doi:10.1155/2017/3683546

Abstract

The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of the gap between two different mental models on interaction performance through a quantitative way. To achieve that, an index called mental model similarity and a new method called path diagram to elicit mental models were introduced. There are two kinds of similarity: directionless similarity calculated from card sorting and directional similarity calculated from path diagram. An experiment was designed to test their influence. A total of 32 college students participated and their performance was recorded. Through mathematical analysis of the results, three findings were derived. Frist, the more complex the information structures, the lower the directional similarity. Second, directional similarity (rather than directionless similarity) had significant influence on user performance, indicating that it is more effective in eliciting mental models using path diagram than card sorting. Third, the relationship between information structures and user performance was partially mediated by directional similarity. Our findings provide practitioners with a new perspective of bridging the gap between users’ and designers’ mental models.

Highlights

Originating from psychology, mental models are applied to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to explain people’s understanding about how computers work [1]
We considered more details such as directional relationship to elicit a mental model of information structure and get the directional similarity from path diagram and the directionless similarity from card sorting, which may get different results from what Schmettow and Sommer [43] found
The following sections first examine the effects of the information structures on mental model similarity and examine the relationship between mental model similarity and user performance

Summary

Introduction

Originating from psychology, mental models are applied to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to explain people’s understanding about how computers work [1]. Information technology (IT) products are developed based on designers’ mental models, but what designers believed to be easy to understand is not necessarily true for users. Users interact with IT products in a different perspective from designers. They form their own understanding and predict feedback of IT products [2]. Users whose mental models are different from those of designers encounter interaction difficulties, but certain users with wrong/incomplete mental models can successfully use IT products [3]. Actions (e.g., training) have been taken to reduce the gap between users’ and designers’ mental models, few studies examine whether and to what extent the gap is reduced

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion